


Technology Troubles

by DifferentChild



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Happy Birthday Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23472757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DifferentChild/pseuds/DifferentChild
Summary: Little Katie gets curious...which can only mean trouble.
Relationships: Colleen Holt & Matt Holt, Colleen Holt & Pidge | Katie Holt, Colleen Holt/Sam Holt, Matt Holt & Pidge | Katie Holt, Matt Holt & Sam Holt, Sam Holt & Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Technology Troubles

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from unsuspecting piñata on KidgeonPost: “the first time pidge cracked open a machine without sam or matt”

Katie was five the first time she was left alone long enough to cause specific mischief. They had just moved into their house in Arizona and Katie was bored. Dad was at work. Matt was with dad, and she was home with Mom. Mom, however, was in a different part of the house. She was five now and Nonna was back in Italy so no one was watching her. Nonno was in Italy and so were her cousins and zias and zios. So her mom left her alone for once. But the doors were locked 

Most things were still in boxes, taped tightly shut. Nothing breakable or incredibly dangerous was within reach. They had covers on the outlets and Sam had instilled a respect and awe for most technological things, electricity included. She’d just gone upstairs for a few minutes to unpack some more. Baby gate up since she was small, she couldn’t climb upstairs without noise.   
  
Door to downstairs shut and locked. Her only option was to play where she was. Colleen had made  _ sure _ there was nothing Katie could get into...so she thought.

Then there was the game system. Katie LOVED playing games with Matt! It was an old one too. One he had forever. And she wanted to play it!! Grabbing the remote, Katie turned the TV on. It was still on the video game channel because they didn’t have TV set up yet. Despite being considered a genius, as her IQ test had already shown, she couldn’t figure out how to make it work. Pressing the on button, the game system didn’t turn on. She crawled back behind the TV to make sure it was plugged in. Matt had been playing it with her yesterday and it worked. 

Yep. Plugged in. Maybe unplugging and plugging back in. She wasn’t supposed to touch things like power cords without supervision but it was normal enough. Just don’t touch the metal part. Only the cord. Easy enough.

Taking it out carefully, she remembered to count all the way to 10 because that was how long you were supposed to keep stuff out when you restarted stuff. “Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sai, sette, otto, nove, dieci.”

Time to put it back in. Trying again, Katie looked carefully at the holes and plugged the game system back in. Now it was sure to work!!

Excitedly crawling back over, she sat and once again pressed the on button again. Nothing.

Hmmm…

It wasn’t working. Neither controller! 

“I know!” Standing, Katie walked over to her dad’s office. Now her dad was super smart. But he didn’t always remember to lock the door. So getting in and grabbing tools was easy!

His toolbox had lots of cool stuff.

“Perfetto.”

Since it was big, she had to pull it out into the living room but that was fine. She was stronger now! Ok not as strong as dad or Matt, mostly dad. But stronger now cause she was five.

Once it was next to the game system, she plopped back down and grabbed the screwdriver. Time to find the problem.

____

A few minutes. That’s all it was. Colleen was gone for maybe ten minutes tops when she came downstairs to see the disaster her youngest child had created.   
  
“KATIE! What are you doing??!” The botanist raced over to see that her daughter had dismantled her son’s game system…   
  


“I’m fixing it!” She beamed, tools down and looking at the parts, trying to figure out if anything looked different.   
  
‘Fixing’ more than fixing perhaps. It looked disastrous and Sam would be home any minute with Matt. Her son would throw a fit, rightfully so this time. And who knew what Sam would say. Honestly Colleen was more worried about her son than her husband.

“Sweetie, that’s very nice that you want to fix it, but was it really broken?”   
  
“It doesn’t work!” Moving to grab another tool, she was interrupted by her mother.   
  
“Why don’t we wait for daddy to get home? Hmm? Or maybe let mommy take a look?” Her experience was more with software than hardware in computing but it couldn’t hurt.   
  
“NO!” Katie leaned over the partially dismembered technology, guarding it with her body. 

Sighing, Colleen tried again. Maybe she could persuade her daughter to at least leave it be for now? Or put it back together? “Sweetheart, why don’t we close it up, hmm?”    
  


“NO!” This was her first time by herself and she would NOT let them take it away from her.

For better, or worse, the pattern continued until her daughter was on the verge of a full on meltdown. This happened anytime she tried to stop her daughter from doing science experiments. Usually she could be swayed to stop and eat, with the proper bribe, but ONLY if no one touched it. Katie would literally fall asleep with her projects. And she was only five! Colleen shuddered to think how much worse this would get as her daughter grew up.

Tears were running down Katie’s face when the door opened to reveal the other half of their family walking in. 

“Hi honey I’m home!” Sam walked in and headed right to his wife to kiss her, surprised she didn’t come to greet him. 

Then Matt screamed and everything made sense. “NO!!! MY XBOX!” He ran over and tried to get it away from his little sister.

That simply resulted in more screaming, this time from her. “NO!”   
  
“KATIE GIVE IT!”   
  
“NO!”   
  
“YOU RUINED IT!”   
  
“NO!! I CAN FIX IT!”

While these sorts of arguments were not common, they would become as such. Sam and Colleen could already tell.

  
Yelling only made Katie cry louder and harder, not a fan of unexpected loud noises. Even if she was now contributing to it.

  
“Your turn.” It wasn’t as though Colleen didn’t know how to handle her children, she knew perfectly well. But Sam was the one who taught her, and clearly somehow left his tools available to their daughter to access, so he got to deal with it. She was usually the peacemaker if anything happened. 

“Alright, alright.” He frowned and whistled, causing both kids to stop. Matt stood up at attention as he was taught to do. Katie covered her ears but sat up and turned her attention to her father as was the goal. Despite being an accomplished scientist, he was also very much a military man. 

“Matt. Back away from your sister for a moment.” Sam ordered, turning more into Commander Dad than regular Dad.

“Katie. I want you to calmly explain to me what’s going on. Let’s start with: Why did you open the XBox? And where did you get the tools? Take your time.” Her brain worked fast but sometimes she needed a moment if he wanted her to explain it  _ calmly _ , that being the key word.

He held up a hand to silence his son who was very upset with his sister. If Katie didn’t have the space to talk, she wouldn’t be at all rational. She was only five despite her intelligence.   
  
“I wanted to play and it didn’t work.” Simple enough. If they’d come home to see her playing a game, Matt would’ve just joined in and encouraged her. But seeing her take the thing apart? Much different.   
  
“Why didn’t you ask Mom for help?” That was what he didn’t understand. Colleen probably could’ve helped her figure it out. Odds were it was a simple issue.   
  
“I unplugged it and plugged it back in! I know I’m not supposed to cause it’s not a charger but I was ok! It didn’t work.”

The rule was put in place so she wouldn’t go unplugging things to see what happened. That had been a phase when she was younger and it drove her parents crazy.

“Still, why not ask mom for help?” He knew his wife was more than capable of troubleshooting a game. 

“I want to do it!” Not wanted, want. She still intended to do this.

“And where did you get the tools?” He hadn’t gotten her her own set yet and she was awfully small to be using his. Plus they were locked away in his office.   
  
“I went and got them.” Katie pointed to his door which was more than slightly opened by this point.   
  
“But it’s locked sweetie.”  _ Please don’t let her have learned how to pick locks now _ .

“Nuh uh! It wasn’t locked!” 

“Sam...did you forget to lock your office  _ again _ ?!” Colleen was not happy at that thought. His office was already a mess and it always was wherever they were. The man was hopeless when working. 

“I locked it! I think…” The older man had the grace to look sheepish since he thought he had but apparently not since his daughter was sitting there with a toolbox next to her.

  
Matt was bursting at the seems, trying to stay quiet but unable to hold it in. “Dad, she ruined it!!! It’s my XBox and she took it apart!!” Sure his father could probably put something like that back together but not if his sister destroyed it. 

“It made clicky noises!” Grabbing the hard drive, Pidge held it up to her father. “I took it out because clicking is bad.” That was a basic thing she had already learned. Unless it was a keyboard or something that was supposed to click, clicking was bad.

That just made Matt whine again. “Dadddd she probably doesn’t even know what she’s talking about!!” Normally he was all for his sister learning and experimenting but on  _ his _ XBox?? Definitely not.   
  
“Now hold on son.” Sam bent down to take a look at the hard drive his daughter was holding out. “We should at least take a look.” If they humored her then they could figure out what made her do it, and perhaps stop her from doing it again.

Proud that he was finally taking her seriously, Katie decided to explain further. “It’s broken.”

“Hmmm.” Studying the hard drive he didn’t see anything until he turned it over. “Well I’ll be darned. It’s got a crack Matt. She’s not wrong.”Sam grinned and ruffled her hair.   
  
“What?? You’re kidding? No way!” Sure his sister was smart but she was five!!

He passed it over, going to his office to grab a spare. Only in a family like theirs were unused hard drives legitimately just sitting around in someone’s office. With various parts, tools, and machinery, Sam had a variety of science equipment in the house. Nowadays he mostly studied astrobiology, but his roots were in computers. It was where he met Colleen.

“No way you figured this out all by yourself!!” Matt was torn between devastated because hopefully his dad could put this back together again, and kind of impressed if she really did manage to figure this out. And not break it permanently.

  
“Uh huh!!! I did too!” Her smile was big,  _ especially _ now that her brother was acknowledging her skills.

“Alright kiddos. I’ve got another one right here. Should be good to go. Though if you don’t mind Katie cub, I’m going to put it back together. Just for time’s sake. So you can play faster.” If he used that excuse she might not fight him on it. And it would alleviate some stress for Matt.

“But I wanna do it…” Still some fight but her pushback wasn’t as strong as when they were trying to actively take it away from her. The acknowledgement had calmed her to an extent.

“How about this, you can help me, ok? I’ll give you instructions but you can help me do it. Two sets of hands can be better than one!”

Katie quickly nodded and let her father take the lead because she still got to help. This was the first time she’d taken something apart by herself and it was right!!

Carefully instructing her on how to replace the hard drive, as it was the simplest part, Sam watched her put it back in place, helping reconnect the cables. Thankfully she didn’t completely ruin any part. His training had been enough for that. But she did make a mess that he had to fix. 

Because she knew her family, Colleen had made a snack for the kids while Sam helped them. Last time she’d been the one helping the kids and he was the one in the kitchen so it was a fair trade, not a rule.

“Peanut butter crackers and apples. Eat up. Katie, you too. Let your father finish and then you two can play.” Sam would get a lecture that night about locking his office door but she didn’t have too much room since she left their daughter alone, giving her time to do this.

Reluctantly, and only because it was peanut butter, Katie got up and followed Matt to the kitchen table to eat as their mother instructed.

Since the kids were occupied, it didn’t take Sam long to put the thing back together and sign Matt back into the thing. Thankfully everything was saved under his login. “You’ll have to re-download your games and stuff son, but you’ll be good to go. Plus this hard drive is bigger anyway so you’ll have more space.” Things were always backed up on hard drives and the web. Double the safety precautions so no lost data.

“Awesome! Thanks dad!” He was relieved that Katie hadn’t ruined it. That would make things soooo boring.

“Thank your sister. I could’ve figured it out, sure, but she did it first. Even if her methods were a bit...unusual.”  _ To say the least _ .

Did he want to thank his sister? Not really. She took apart his game system and scared him. But she looked pretty proud of herself. “Grazie Pidge…” The nickname was a way of getting back at her while also following instructions.   
  
“Don’t call me that!!” The five-year-old pouted, throwing a cracker at him.

He just caught it in his mouth, grinning at her. “Mmmmmm.”   
  
“Matty!!!!! Stop!!!”    
  
Sighing, Colleen sat down and beckoned her husband over. If she didn’t stop him he’d be playing too. “Your brother said thank you...in his own way...And Matt, next time be nice to your sister. Katie, next time  _ ask for help _ instead of taking it apart first. Ok?”   
  
“Ok…” They chorused after a pause. Neither liked what she was telling them but both acknowledged it was better to agree, whether they complied or not.

In the end, the XBox was playable after all.

____

”You know, she’s got a bright future ahead of her if she figured that out by herself.” Sam mentioned as they got into bed that evening.

“Sam, she took the thing apart because she was bored and it wouldn’t turn on.” Though secretly she had to agree, even if Colleen was still frustrated with their youngest.

Building off of that, and teasing his wife, Sam had to add in a reminder. “And she never would’ve had the chance if you’d been there.” 

“Don’t remind me.” She mumbled as she laid down next to him, snuggling against him. “I won’t let her alone for so long without making sure she’s occupied  _ first _ .” A promise to herself.

“There are definitely worse things she could've done darling. She’s definitely ours you know. I happened to remember a young computer scientist who liked to take things apart as well…” Placing a gentle kiss on her lips, Sam chuckled.

Colleen kissed back but rolled her eyes as she settled back against him. “I wasn’t five. And I knew how to put it back together.”

“Either way mio amore, she’s only going to grow from here.” Sam encouraged and soothed.   
  
“I suppose…” Conceding, she closed her eyes and pulled the blankets up.

“Relax darling. You’ll miss these days soon.” Turning the lights off, he slid his glasses off as well.

That made her laugh, mission accomplished.

“Miss my daughter tearing things apart? I don’t think so.”

“No, miss when it’s only an XBox instead of something bigger.”   
  
“SAM!”   
  
“Goodnight my love…”

He was right. In a few years time she would miss when the mess was so easily confined...

**Author's Note:**

> Also a huge thank you to twinkletoes-rp on discord! She rocks and helped me figure out what might be wrong with it!
> 
> On top of that, IT IS HER BIRTHDAY TOO!! So wish her a happy birthday if you know her! She and our Pidgeon share the day <3 !
> 
> ___
> 
> Also I suck at endings and I'm tired so no judgey. XD


End file.
